Cash Squeeze on Campus

By Ellie McGrath

Lagging appropriations are endangering many state universities

The University of California at Berkeley is one of the nation's proudest institutions of higher learning. Nonetheless, its Life Sciences Building, constructed in 1930, is a crumbling monument to deferred maintenance. When the air-conditioning system broke down last winter, the heat killed dozens of rats being used by visiting Fulbright Professor Veronica Tamasy in a research project; it was the second time in three months that a batch of her rats had succumbed to equipment failure. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, cash is so short, complains Historian James Leutze, that he must dig into his own pocket for postage money to mail manuscripts to scholarly publications. At the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, which has one of the nation's top electrical-engineering departments, Professor James Coleman's study of semi conductors depends on water-cooled equipment that quit repeatedly when anyone in the building flushed a toilet.

These state-supported universities, and many others across the nation, are struggling to get by with in adequate appropriations voted by state legislatures that have pressing bud get problems. The squeeze threatens to impair the quality of some of the nation's best universities. One alarming result of shrinking budgets: ranking faculty mem bers are departing for either private industry or better-paying professorships at universities in other areas, notably the Southwest, which has been less hurt by stringent economizing. At Illinois, Vice Chancellor Theodore Brown admits: "This university is struggling to survive as a first-class institution."

With taxing powers crimped by voter revolts, and state revenues depressed by the recent recession, funding for students enrolled in public colleges and universities has slipped by an inflation-adjusted aver age of nearly 8% since 1978, according to the Federal Government's National Institute of Education. Among the hardest hit are states in the Midwest and Northeast.

In Ohio, for example, appropriations per student, $2,666 in 1982-83, have declined by 29% since 1978, measured in today's dollars. In Vermont, the drop is 18%; in New Hampshire, it is 24%.

A typical case of budget cutting can be found at the University of California in San Diego. With a growing reputation as a research campus, the school ranks ninth among U.S. universities in the number of faculty members who belong to the National Academy of Sciences. (The leaders: Harvard, M.I.T. and Stanford.) Even so, U.C. San Diego, with an enrollment of 13,200, has so few computers that students sometimes must wait until after midnight to get a turn at the machines. " Officials want to buy four new computers, but each costs $375,000, the amount currently budgeted for all instructional equipment for the entire campus.

Shortages show up in other ways.

Says Brian Blackburn, who graduated from Illinois this summer with a degree in electrical engineering:

"When I was a junior, there would be between 20 and 25 people in a class, but this year it's been 45 and 50 in every one. I think I may have been lucky to come through when I did."

Searching for ways to save money, many state universities are trying to cut back or eliminate programs that they feel are not essential. In the past two years, Michigan has reduced its Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations by 50%, scrapped its geography department, closed down an institute for the study of the mentally retarded, and made plans to reduce the size of its natural resources school. In addition, Michigan has begun a major reassessment of its schools of art and education. The University of Washington is phasing out programs in the nutritional sciences, textile studies and urban planning, steps that will save $11.8 million during the next two years. In all, the school plans to eliminate 22 programs by June 1984.

Many educators are concerned that such cutbacks will inevitably diminish their university's stature. Said David Saxon, before he left the presidency of the University of California system in July to become chairman of M.I.T.'s governing board: "We are faced with the possibility of cuts so substantial that they would force us to put at risk the thoroughly documented excellence of the university's programs."

With money so tight, salaries of faculty members have lagged about 20% behind inflation during the past decade. Officials on California's Berkeley campus estimate the school's salaries to be 13.5% below those at leading private and public institutions. Although many scientists and engineers, as well as some liberal arts scholars, supplement their pay by earning consulting and speaking fees (annual average at state schools: about $2,700), they generally earn far less than their counterparts in private industry.

Inadequate pay is not the only reason for falling faculty morale. "You're trying to do genetic engineering in a lab that was built for the dissection of a frog," complains William Baker, a budget administrator for the California university system. At Washington, officials are putting tenured professors whose programs have been canceled into other departments. But, says James West, chairman of the faculty senate, "if you were vigorous and intellectual, would you want to stay on teaching something you aren't best suited to? Some people, good people, took early retirement. Some went elsewhere."

At the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin, where the average salary of a full professor is $38,000, twelve members of the department of electrical and computer engineering have left in the past 20 months; some retired, while others took higher-paying jobs in private industry, in several cases doubling their university salaries. Trying to hire replacements, Department Chairman William Birkemeier offered jobs to six scholars last spring, but got no acceptances. Illinois estimates that 150 tenured faculty members have left during the past two years. Says Edwin Goldwasser, vice chancellor for academic affairs: "The ones we lose first are always the best, the ones we'd like to keep."

When brilliant scholars resign, the faculty, and hence the institutions as a whole, begin to suffer. Says Larry Faulkner, one of the University of Illinois' experts in electrochemistry: "Stability makes the difference between an absolutely first-class state university and a mediocre one. You are able to congregate a great faculty because of a certain atmosphere--and when that gets destroyed, it's hard to put it back together again." Faulkner, 38, was particularly concerned that Illinois would not be able to pay his pension when he retired. Last week he moved into a new job at the University of Texas in Austin. "Texas," he says, "pays its bills." Faulkner's salary at Texas will be $47,000, $3,000 more than it was at Illinois. Sustained by both the legislature and oil-well revenues, which amounted to $55 million last year (total operating budget: $242 million), Texas has been able to recruit two dozen senior professors in the past two years from other institutions.

To compensate for lagging appropriations, state universities have had to raise tuition and fees. Although state schools remain far less expensive than private ($4,721 for the average total cost vs. $8,440), the increase at some major public institutions has been dramatic. At Washington these costs have doubled (from $689 to $ 1,320) in the past three years. Last year Minnesota's instructional charges rose 21.5%, and this year they will go up an additional 15.9%, to $ 1,693. Says Minnesota's president, Peter Magrath: "In the public sector of higher education, really low tuition has gone the way of cheap gasoline."

Magrath and other educators are concerned that the rising costs are making it more difficult for students from low-income families to attend college. In 1970, the University of Michigan set a 10% goal for black enrollment. Today the Ann Arbor campus has the seventh highest charge for tuition and fees ($2,193) of any state university, and a black student population of less than 5%. Says James McDermott, a Washington State senator: "Education is more and more becoming the province of the haves."

Copying the long-established techniques of private schools, state universities are beginning to appeal to their alumni for donations. Penn State, for example, will solicit its graduates for $200 million during a fund-raising effort now in the planning stages. Public universities are also asking Big Business for gifts. Arizona State is using $ 12 million it got from private industry to bolster its growing engineering program. Indeed, state schools are also trying to earn a buck just about any way they can. Wisconsin hopes to cash in on the 325 acres it owns in downtown Madison, and the University of Alabama has been developing coal deposits on land that the state received from the Federal Government after the Civil War to compensate for battle damage to the Tuscaloosa campus.

There are a few signs that state governments, despite their continuing financial woes, understand the important economic role played by their public universities. Democratic Governor Anthony Earl of Wisconsin set aside $1 million in his 1983-85 budget to boost the pay of outstanding professors at the university's 13 campuses. In June, Illinois passed a one-year increase in income, sales and gas taxes, which will provide the Urbana and Chicago campuses with $26.6 million more this year. But for the foreseeable future, public universities will be at the mercy of the political priorities and economic conditions of the states. And until economic recovery swells tax receipts, many states will not have enough money to go around. --By Ellie McGrath. Reported by

J. Madeleine Nash/Urbana-Champaign and Dick Thompson/San Francisco, with other bureaus

With reporting by J. MADELEINE NASH, Dick Thompson This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.